Diary of Not a Wimpy Widow

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  • At the End of the World

    October 30, 2014

    We are lined up in our orange life jackets, wearing layers of jackets and fleeces, caps and hoods over our heads, waterproof mittens and boots on our hands and feet. The line of 130 people extends from Deck 4 down to the stern of Deck 2. I am standing on Deck 3. Black zodiac boats with their drivers at the tillers bob on the dark waves. The sun which had been shining cheerfully now has disappeared behind thick dark clouds. It is past six o’clock. No one is talking much. We are waiting for the captain of the expedition ship Via Australis to decide whether or not we can board the zodiacs and land on infamous Cape Horn. If the waves are too high and the wind too strong, we will not go.

    Cape Horn is a small island, not a cape, and is the southernmost point of South America. To its south lies Drake’s Passage and Antarctica. Cape Horn is one of the stormiest and most dangerous passages in the world.  Winds blow cold and constant between 35 – 125 knots. Waves typically are between 80 to 120 feet rising out of freezing cold water and the likelihood of survival once overboard is minimal. Before the Panama Canal was dug, sailing ships rounded the Horn to reach the Pacific Ocean and California. Over ten thousand people have perished in these seas from shipwrecks.

    Now we tourists are hoping to land on this treeless rock of an island and visit the memorial to the lost sailors. Though I have not heard of any tourists drowning, there have been many accidents—broken arms, broken legs, broken fingers and ankles. On the last landing our trip leader made, a tourist from another group broke her leg very badly, a compound fracture. My own accident on a bridge in the Amazon jungle in 2011 is vivid in my memory.

    As we wait, I feel more and more apprehensive. The dark clouds and the shower of rain add to my worries. I can see Cape Horn quite clearly. I don’t need to land on it. The voice of caution in my head says, “Turn around. Get out of the line. Stay on the ship.” But I wait, hoping that the captain will take the decision out of my hands, and tell everyone not to disembark.

    Finally there is a shouted command, and the line begins to move. Around me are my fellow travelers with whom I have been adventuring for over a week. Their presence gives me some courage. Also, we have boarded and disembarked from the zodiacs several times the past few days, though never with so difficult a landing, and I know the crew are strong and take good care of us. I will trust my life to them.

    To my right is the board holding the cabin numbers of the passengers. I hesitate for a moment, then unsnap the cabin tag from my life vest, and hang the tag from the hook below my cabin number: 417. It will await my return.

    The line stops moving abruptly. The zodiacs have backed away from the ship again, and the ships’ engines are roaring; the captain is moving the ship to better position the stern for the oncoming battering waves. We wait, and then the line begins to move again. The metal steps are slippery with rain, and I walk down carefully, leading left foot, left foot, like a child. My knees are bone on bone, with bone spurs, and this trip has been very hard on them.

    The zodiac is lashed to the ship with a rope, and a crew member extends his arm to me. I grasp his forearm with my right hand, and step onto the rubber rim of the zodiac, then down into the boat, sit down on the rim and slide to the stern, up against one of my shipmates. Loaded with twelve passengers, we back away from the ship.

    I grab the rope that runs around the top of the zodiac rim with my right hand and hang on tightly. The waves are rough and the driver zigzags the boat to keep from being overturned. To my left one of the German women is bent all the way over into the zodiac. I had heard her talking to her husband earlier, obviously pleading not to go. He replied that it was the highlight of the trip. I could make that much out, even though I don’t speak German. She is plainly terrified. So am I.

    Some of the German tourists start singing loudly. The zodiac driver is laughing. I am saying a four letter word over and over, under my breath. As we reach the cove of the island, the waves are not as bad, but the water still is very rough. Two of the crew are clad in wetsuits and standing in the water, up to their waists, to help secure the zodiac and hold it next to the landing site.

    With the help of the crew, the passengers disembark. One by one we slide to the bow of the zodiac, as far up as we can, swing both legs to the left over the side, and step onto the water- swept ramp. I have short legs but I manage to disembark without getting my feet very wet. The ramp leads to the wooden stairway that climbs the side of the cliff.

    Kristin on cape hornI start the long painful climb, being careful because the wooden stairs are slippery with rain, and in some places rotten. I am thankful for the railing which I grab to pull myself up each step. On the lower part of the stairs there are landings where I can stop and rest and take some photographs. I lose count of the number of stairs.

    Finally I am at the top of the cliff. From here to the right, a wooden board walk and steps leads to the sailors’ memorial erected in 1992—a round metal disc with the center perforated by a stylized albatross. To the left the walk leads to a chapel and the lighthouse, where a member of the Chilean navy and his family currently are stationed. When I step out of the shelter at the top of the stairs, I am blasted by the wind. The wind was bad on the steppes of Patagonia, but it is much worse here. It is difficult to stand still and take a photograph.

    FullSizeRender The passengers are bent over and staggering along the walkway, where there are no railings. They look like figures in the final scene of Bergman’s movie, The Seventh Seal. I debate whether or not to go all the way to the memorial and finally decide against it. I am on Cape Horn, I do not need to go any further, and I need to save my strength to descend the steps safely.

    Already some of the passengers from the first few boats are returning to go down the cliff, and after taking a few more photographs, I turn and start down the stairs. A few feet below me, one of my fellow travelers slips on the wet stairs and slides down a few feet. She says she is not hurt. I hold the railing a bit tighter. The sun has partially emerged from the clouds; it is much lower on the horizon. Our hour on the island is almost up.  

    I get into a waiting zodiac, swinging both legs into the boat. The waves seem to be bigger now, and I lean into the boat, as the German woman did. Now I am repeating softly my mantra from The Hobbit: there and back again, there and back again. The zodiac bobs and leaps toward the ship.

    The rope to secure the boat is lying by my foot, and I lean over to pick it up and throw it toward the bow, but my body is blocking the motorman’s view of the ship’s ladder. He shouts at me to sit up, which I quickly do. He tries several times to get the zodiac close enough to the ship for a crewman to climb down to help us. Finally one of the crew climbs into the boat.

    When it is my turn to get out, I slip and fall, my right knee landing heavily on the black rim of the boat. I can feel the blood welling to the surface, but I clamber upright and take the extended arm of the crewman, grasping the ladder of the ship with my other hand, and climb up to safety.  

    That night is our last on the Via Australis. We toast the success of the expedition with champagne. The boat crews are ecstatic and beaming; they achieved a rough landing with no one injured. And me? I am ecstatic, too. I made it, there and back again.  

      Poem at the Sailors’ Memorial

    I, the albatross that awaits for you at the end of the world…

    I, the forgotten soul of the sailors lost that crossed Cape Horn from all the seas of the world.

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     But die they did not in the fierce waves,

     for today towards eternity in my wings they soar

    in the last crevice of the Antarctic winds

    Sara Vial Dec – 1992  

  • Beauty Before Me, Beauty Around Me

    August 29, 2014

    It is hard for me to sit down by my swimming pool, put my feet up on a stool, and look at the beautiful garden without seeing all the jobs that I need to do. I can build to-do lists in my head without any paper. On this late afternoon, I look across the rock-edged pool to the two sharp-leafed yuccas at the shallow end of the pool. At their feet the bright yellow black-eyed susans hold up their sunny faces, like children to school teachers on the first day of school. Nearby a humming bird is loving up the red blossoms of the cardinal flower, and next to them the crape myrtle is shedding its bark to reveal beautiful layers of dark red.

    But my eyes move behind the two yuccas to the tall weeds that need to be yanked out. And further behind them to the dead tips of the low growing cedar hit by rust; the dead branches need to be cut out before the disease advances further. In the background on the grassy slope of the hill, the late afternoon sun lights up the gray leafless branches of the cherry tree stricken by fire blight. Bill planted this tree, and our daughter picked cherries from the tree to bake cherry pies for him on Father’s Day. Now the tree is almost entirely dead and needs to be removed.

    And in that moment, a bluebird flies into the dead tree and perches on a gray branch. It is as blue as the cloudless sky above. All I can see is beauty.

    Beauty before me, beauty around me. All I need to do is stop and look.

  • “That’s Where the Light Shines In”

    August 27, 2014

     A few months after Bill’s death from cancer in 2010, one of my ministers in her sermon told the story about a young man who was severely injured in a motorcycle accident and who lost his leg. He was very bitter and angry. During art therapy, he drew pictures full of darkness. One day he drew a picture of a large vase with a jagged crack down the center. But in time, he grew less angry, and he began to reach out to others who had suffered similar accidents. During one of his visits to the hospital, he stopped to say hello to the art therapist who handed him the folder of his drawings. He opened it and thumbed through the drawings, then stopped and drew out the drawing of the broken vase. “This one is not finished,” he said, and picked up a yellow crayon and began to fill in the crack with yellow. “There,” he said, “that’s where the light shines in.” 

    My eyes filled with tears as my minister ended the story. Perhaps in time the light would shine through the terrible hole in my heart. I did not see how.

    But four years later, I think it has. I like to think I have always been a compassionate person, but I believe I have become more attuned to others’ grief. One of my young friends gets angry when told that suffering makes us more compassionate. We do not have to suffer to be compassionate, but unless we roll into a ball of grief and never uncurl, in time our grief and loss softens our hearts. We better understand the pain that others carry, and we realize that everyone we meet is carrying a great burden of some kind.  

    I just finished reading a Washington Post article about Anna Whiston-Donaldson, who has written a memoir Rare Bird about the loss of her 12-year old son in a flooded creek. “Perhaps, she says, her story will offer help and hope to those in mourning, and soften the hearts of those who cross their paths.”

     May all of our hearts be softened and may we reach out to those in need.

     

  • Sorrow’s Cat

    When first you arrived
    Your claws were sharp
    And pricked my skin

    You howled in hall and den
    And study

    And I howled too
    Not knowing how

    We could go on

    But now

    Time has passed

    Grief runs more quietly in our veins

    You curl upon my lap
    My hand rests on your sleek fur
    And within

    Under my fingertips
    The tiniest breath of a purr

    Begins

     

  • Dinner for One

    For me, dinner time now is the hardest part of the day. During my 45 years of marriage, dinner time was not just consuming food, but a ritual, a time for the family to sit down together at the dining room table, to eat and talk. Sometimes there were arguments, but we were together. After the children were grown and out of the house, Bill and I continued the traditions that we had begun in our first year of marriage: lighting two candles, saying grace, having dinner together, whether soup or hamburgers or something fancier that Bill who was the more daring chef was trying for the first time. The radio would be on, playing classical music, but the television never was on during dinner time. 

    Now my dinners are very simple—a frozen pizza, a scrambled egg, prepared soup from the grocery store. They certainly are not well balanced. A nutritionist would give me a good scolding. Sometimes dinner is microwave popcorn. (I was relieved to hear from another widow that she often eats popcorn for dinner.) Food is not very interesting when you are the only one eating—at least that is what I have found. Sometimes I sit on the couch and balance a plate of food and my iPad, watching a TV show via Netflix.  Other nights I sit at the dining room table, in one of the comfortable teak chairs I purchased after Bill’s death with a book by my plate. I cannot bring myself to light a candle, though I light the candles when family or friends are here for dinner. And how pleasant those gatherings are! Also wonderful are lunches with friends. I usually eat enough at those lunches that I don’t need any dinner.  

    I am interested in hearing how other widows or women who find themselves alone after a divorce cope with the dinner hour.  Perhaps in time I will be able to light the candles for dinner for one.

  • Easter Song

    April 20, 2014

    When we moved into the townhouse
     We exulted in our garden
         The earth called out to us
     And we replied

    We planted dwarf fruit trees in one corner
         And called it our orchard
         And in the center we planted a crabapple
     Whose purple blooms filled our spring

    And later at our house on the hill
         Barren from years of neglect
     We brought home in the trunk of our car
     Cherry, plum, and apple trees,
     Maple, magnolia, willow oak,
     Pear and crabapple

    We took turns wielding the spade,
     Tamping down the earth, watering,
     And then we waited

    Thirty-seven years later
         The fruit trees have withered and died
     But the crabapple by the well
     Stretches out its dark arms with purple blossoms

    And the pear tree exults above the little house

    And the maple
     And the willow oaks
     Unfold their tender leaves
         Lift up their arms to the sky
     Singing Hallelujah

    And in the chorus
     I hear your voice

    Hallelujah!

     

     

     

     

  • Technology: Trials and Triumphs

    I grew up with manual typewriters and mimeograph machines. I remember staying up late during my college years, typing my English composition essays, only to have to start over with a new page if I made a mistake, so I blessthe personal computer and my ability to write and make changes and corrections quickly and easily. With my flatbed scanner I can scan and save old photographs, color slides, and documents, and then send them by e-mail around the world. A year ago my children gave me an iPad, and this winter I bought an iPhone—two items I considered gadgets but now am finding indispensable.  In the small package of my iPad, I have books, movies and television shows, a compass, a calculator, a scanner, a camera, a file of photographs, e-mail, a GPS, weather reports, and much more. And when everything works, life is grand. It’s a brave new world indeed.

     When everything works….ah, there’s the rub. About a week ago my beautiful 14-month old iPad Air started malfunctioning. It went to sleep, and I could not turn it back on. I searched on the Internet for solutions and posted questions on my Facebook page. I tried rebooting, and sometimes that did the trick for a minute or even two, but then the iPad would turn itself off again, as though the Genie inside refused to wake up and work.  Finally I made an appointment with a Genius at the Bar in the local Apple store. (Instead of serving drinks at the Bar, they serve solutions.) The e-mail confirming the appointment warned me to back up my iPad to the iCloud, and I tried to do this via iTunes but got an error message part way through. 

    The next day just before my appointment I made a last-minute attempt to wake up the iPad, and it roused just long enough for me to back it up to the iCloud.  A small triumph! But the Genius (a guy who looked about 18 years old) could not fix the iPad. The Genie inside was not asleep, but dead. I must have looked ready to cry, because the Genius said he was sorry, that they could not fix iPads the way they could iPhones and Apple computers. And my iPad was out of warranty. Only solution:  a new iPad at a reduced price, with all my old applications and files (music, photographs, documents, etc.) restored to it. Not exactly the ending I was hoping for, but better than it might have been.

  • A Room of One’s Own

    March 17, 2014

    When I was growing up, I seldom had a room of my own. For a brief time when I was ten, I had a room of my own, the alcove off the living room. During my high school years, I shared a large room with my younger sister. In college, I had a single room my freshman year, but after that I shared a room with my roommate.  And of course after our marriage, I shared a bedroom with my husband Bill, first in apartments, later in houses.

    Two months after Bill died of cancer in our bedroom, I had a strong compulsion to re-decorate the room and I went about it without stopping to figure out why. I brought home samples of peach paint and painted sections of foam board so I could move the boards around under different light. I removed as much furniture as I could and painted the ceiling a light peach and the walls one shade darker. I painted the already white woodwork a crisp white. I replaced the pleated white window shades, dingy from years of use, with Shoji style shades made of paper and bamboo. I ordered a white and brushed nickel ceiling fan, and my son installed it for me. I bought sliding mirror doors to replace the heavy wooden doors on the closet. I did not rearrange the teak furniture, only moved the bed slightly closer to one wall—Bill’s side of the bed.  A friend helped me re-hang the oriental artwork, and I found woodcut style decals of three swallows to put on the walls.  I worked very hard for almost a month.

    At the time I did not puzzle about why I was painting and redecorating. Only later did I wonder, and discussed the compulsion with a friend. “You had to make it yours,” she said. I think that is right. The room had been my room and Bill’s for thirty-three years, and now I needed to make the room mine, in order to stay in it. I needed the room to be familiar and yet different, more feminine.

    Now in the morning I wake up and admire the peach walls and ceiling as the sunshine gradually fills the room. The sun shines through the eastern window that Bill gazed at during his last days. I turn my eyes to the opposite wall where the Chinese calligraphy that I ordered from Hong Kong now hangs above the mirrored closet doors. The calligraphy offers a blessing for a long, healthy, and peaceful life. May it be so.

  • Grow Old Along with Me

    February 9, 2014

     Bill and I were married 45 years, and on the whole they were happy years. Of course there was sturm und drang especially during the children’s growing up years. But the years after Bill’s retirement were especially mellow and happy.

     Before he died of cancer, Bill said he was sure that men would be buzzing around me like bees around a honey pot. I guess that was because he thought I was special. But no bees have shown up, and I have not gone out looking for any. I was lucky to find the best man in the world for me when I was only nineteen—that is how old I was when Bill and I met. There may another man out there for me, but frankly I don’t have the energy to go look. One widow I know said she had started dating again, and I felt an involuntary shudder. To start dating again at the age of 71! It was terrifying enough the first time around.

    Several widows I know have remarried. One met a man in her new neighborhood a few years after her husband’s death.  They enjoy travel and golf and their blended families. Another remarried a year after her husband died to the new man next door. Another much younger widow has found a new love, and I am very happy for her; she is way too young to spend the rest of her life alone. 

    But I am content to walk this path by myself. Bill is gone, but not his love. It was his love that helped me to be the strong resilient woman that I am. I look at the bird bath sundial I gave him for an anniversary gift one year. Engraved on the rim are the words “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be…”

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • To build a fire

     

    January 25, 2014

    I remember years ago reading the classic short story by Jack London entitled “To Build a Fire.”  It was the story of a man hiking in the Yukon in 50 degrees below zero, needing that essential element fire to survive. Tonight as I struggle to get a fire going in the wood burning fireplace insert, I feel something of that man’s frustration but not his desperation. Mostly I am irritated that the fires I have been building the past week are very slow to catch and require many trips to the fireplace to poke logs, adjust the air flow, and sometimes start all over from the beginning.

    Build is the operative word. I try to build a base of several sheets of crumpled newspapers, a few pieces of fat wood from LLBean, and kindling that I have gathered from outside. On top I place a fire starter or two. I frame the base with two short logs on each side and two longer logs across the top. I have learned that after lighting the fire I need to keep one of the glass doors slightly open for the first five minutes, and not to choke back the air intake lever too soon. This is a new skill I am learning, or reviving from my Girl Scout camping days at Ft. Knox. Bill was the one who built the fires here. It was a guy thing. I just sat back and admired.

    I think part of the problem right now may be slightly damp wood. Before the snow fell on Tuesday I filled up the wood rack by the fireplace with dry wood, but for the past few days the logs that I have been lugging inside were at the top of the snow covered pile by the kitchen door. I knocked the snow off but the logs still were damp. I guess I need to buy a tarp. A year ago that stack by the back door was five feet long and five feet high, split and expertly stacked by my friend Alan. I burnt most of those logs last winter, and now the stack is almost gone, meaning I will need to push the plastic lawn cart out to the horse barn where I have two full racks of aged split logs. After multiple trips I will have a new log pile outside the kitchen door. Wouldn’t it be loverly if there were manor house servants here to take care of these jobs?

    If damp wood is the problem, how did anyone in the wilderness survive? And I know that the man in London’s story did not have fire starters or fat wood from LLBean or an infinite number of matches, nor the oil furnace that is the principal source of my heat. If you have forgotten what happened to the man in the Yukon, here is the link to the full story: http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html

    But I the meantime the fire in my fireplace is sputtering and needs attention, and I must return to one of the most basic tasks of humans through the ages:

    Building a fire.